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Terror, disbelief, shock: witnesses tell of Mumbai horror
AFP - 1 hour 46 minutes ago
MUMBAI (AFP) - - From dead bodies and blood-spattered walls to cowering in hotel rooms without food or water for 36 hours, eyewitnesses have given dramatic accounts of the terrifying carnage in Mumbai.
Caught up in the brazen attack on India's financial hub, many said they hid in the dark for hours, waiting to be rescued and fearing armed militants would shoot them dead at any moment.
"I cannot believe what I have seen in the last 36 hours. I have seen dead bodies, blood everywhere and only heard gunshots," said Muneer Al Mahaj after he was rescued from the luxury Oberoi/Trident hotel Friday.
Mahaj, who was one of 93 people who emerged tired but relieved from the seafront hotel, is no stranger to deadly extremist violence -- he lives in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
The businessman told reporters: "I have not seen a proper meal for the last 36 hours. I have been surviving only on biscuits and that too got over. Last night (Thursday) I ran out of water too."
At the packed departure hall of Mumbai's international airport, Australian lawyer Greg Campbell was still wearing the clothes in which he fled the Oberoi/Trident late Wednesday when the heavily armed militants burst in.
"We came into a lane from a basement and someone had been shot. There was blood everywhere. We found taxis and said, 'take us to the Taj (Mahal hotel),'" he told AFP.
Luckily, they were advised against it.
South African security guard Faisul Nagel was having dinner with colleagues at a Taj restaurant when the assault began. They barricaded the restaurant and moved everyone into the kitchen.
"We basically put the lights off in the restaurant just to create an element of surprise. And we armed ourselves with kitchen knives and meat cleavers," he told AFP by phone.
They ended up helping around 120 people escape -- including a 90-year-old woman who had to be carried in her chair down 25 flights of stairs.
When guests finally escaped, they could hardly believe their eyes.
"Outside in the foyer of this beautiful hotel, (it) was just like in a fog with all the smoke," retired judge Paul Guest told Australian radio. "There was blood all over the floor and bits of bodies."
It was a harrowing night of terror for many, who tried not to make noise for fear of attracting the attention of the attackers. Many feared coming out of their rooms amid shooting and with grenades exploding around them.
"It was the most harrowing, harrowing thing I've ever been through, the most scary experience of my life. Really scary, just absolute, absolute carnage," Briton Steve Vincent told the BBC as he arrived back from Mumbai.
A Singaporean woman was killed at the Oberoi/Trident hotel after her captors warned that troops should refrain from storming the building, Singapore's foreign ministry said.
The carnage was not confined to hotels.
Scores were gunned down by automatic gunfire at the city's main railway station while a restaurant popular with backpackers and other tourists was also attacked.
Johana, a 24-year-old French tourist travelling with her cousin, was having dinner at the Leopold restaurant in Mumbai's Colaba tourist district when she spotted several young men with large rucksacks slung over their shoulders.
"They took weapons out of their sacks, lobbed three grenades and began shooting at anything that moved with their automatic weapons. There were several dead," Johana told AFP at a Paris airport soon after her arrival.
The tourist, who declined to give her full name, described the assailants as young men whose faces were not covered and "looked Indian."
"People ran out of the restaurant while others, like us, hid under the tables. Some found refuge in the kitchens and they didn't make it," she recounted, her voice shaking.
For some foreign nationals, staying in Mumbai was not an option -- at least in the short-term.
"It's time to go where you feel a bit safe," a British executive with a European bank told AFP as he queued at Mumbai airport for a flight to Singapore with his family.
"We need to just get away from the chaos," he said, requesting anonymity.
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